Amazon’s Brand Takes a Hit on Social Media During #PrimeDay

Negative tweets up 241%, but e-tail giant claims big win

Social media sentiments around Amazon took a noticeable turn for the worse during the first 13 hours of Prime Day, which has the e-commerce site offering a slew of deals to celebrate its 20th birthday. Deals like 35 percent off Velveeta Shells & Cheese—on a day the Seattle-based company predicted would rival Black Friday—created negative responses on Facebook and Twitter.

So we asked Amobee Brand Intelligence to mine Twitter and see how the conversation reflected upon the Amazon brand. While the numbers aren't as bad as one might imagine, the website's stature did take a hit:

Of the 112,581 "Amazon" tweets between 12 a.m. and 1 p.m. EDT, 23 percent were positive, and 12 percent were negative (65 percent were neutral). During the same time period the day before, 22 percent of the tweets about Amazon were positive, while only 7 percent were negative (71 percent neutral).

Unsurprisingly, with all the buzz, Amazon also saw an uptick in positive tweets, with 25,895 registering for the brand.That calculates to an increase of 108 percent compared to July 14, when there were 12,430 of them.

The hashtag #PrimeDay has trended nationally on Twitter all day, with 22 percent of the tweets being positive and 21 percent negative (57 percent neutral).

Interestingly, with Walmart holding an online sale of its own today, the big box retailer garnered 20,385 tweets from 12 a.m. to 1 p.m., according to Amobee.

The Foster City, Calif.-based analytics company also said digital consumption across the Web during the last two days for Amazon was up 76 percent compared with prior days.

So, despite the negative feedback about the lack of quality items, Amazon still may have gotten a big sales win.

In fact, a company spokesperson sent us the following comment on Prime Day at 1:30 p.m. Eastern:

"Prime Day peak order rates have already surpassed 2014 Black Friday. Prime members have bought tens of thousands of Fire TV Sticks, 35,000 Lord of the Rings Blu-Ray sets, 28,000 Rubbermaid sets, and 4,000 Echos in 15 minutes. The Kate Spade purse was gone in less than a minute. The 1.2K of $999 TVs sold out in less than 10 minutes and there are thousands more deals coming. New deals start every 10 minutes until late tonight."